Large Hadron Collider Just Might Melt Its Way Out of a Glitch

March 28, 2015 12:35 AM

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Operations at the Large Hadron Collider apparently have been stymied by a little piece of metal that fell into the works, creating a short circuit — and Europe's CERN particle physics center says one of the remedies being considered is to turn up the electrical current high enough to "melt the offending object."

After a two-year-long shutdown for upgrades, the world's most powerful particle accelerator was due to resume shooting beams of protons through its 17-mile-round (27-kilometer-round) ring of helium-cooled magnets this week. But the LHC's operators detected an intermittent short circuit in one of the...